Brands
There is a reason brands exist. Let’s say you are looking for a thing and you find it by Brand A and Brand B. You have heard A has made a bunch of fine stuff in the past and B has made shit. If they are the same price which would you buy. How much cheaper would the one from B have to be to make you try it, they do have a reputation for shit.
What if you had never heard of B. If the price were the same would you buy from A, who you know had made good stuff in the past, or B, who you have no idea about? How much would the price difference have to be to make you take a chance of B?
If B gets a reputation for shit stuff what stops them from changing the brand to C and starting over again with a neutral reputation.
Amazon had a problem with non branded crap on their site, so the started a rule that they would only sell stuff from brands that had registered with the US. Those unbranded crap sellers registered brands, for a small fee, with the US. That’s why you see stuff made by XYYZ. If XYYZ gets a bad rep they will just pay a small fee and register ZYYX as a brand and start over.
Ali
AliExpress is a Chinese company and they do not have a lot of stuff Americans have come to expect.
Some of their stuff is fine, and a LOT cheaper. They don’t have a lot of the overhead of American, or whatever country you are in, companies. Their warehouse is in China. Shipping can take weeks, in place of days.
Some stuff is fine, but illegal. They may sell stuff that is illegal in your country, America does not allow fake Chanel bags but an Ali seller could get away with shipping single pieces to Americans. Oh, but that’s illegal. Good luck prosecuting a Chinese company. Far more likely to have your package confiscated.
Some stuff has misleading/difficult to read descriptions. A wonderful description of a car. in small, easily missed, print this is offer 2 the standard is offer 1 and that is the door handle. Quite often if you do catch it nefore ordering and demand offer 2 you will not get it.
Some stuff is an outright scam. You may get nothing or what you get is wildly different from the offer, are you sure you read it REAL carefully?
Ali offers a money back guarantee. Are you going to go through the pain of getting one for $2.34, or are you going to say it’s not worth it and let them make $2.10 on you?
Amazon is almost as bad these days.